Hôtel de Ville, Paris
Encyclopedia
The Hôtel de Ville in :Paris, France, is the building housing the City of Paris's administration. Standing on the place de l'Hôtel de Ville (formerly the place de Grève
Place de Grève
The public square in the 4th arrondissement of Paris that is now the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville was, before 1802, called the Place de Grève. The French word grève refers to a flat area covered with gravel or sand situated on the shores or banks of a body of water...
) in the city's IVe arrondissement
IVe arrondissement
The 4th arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France.Situated on the Right Bank of the River Seine, it is bordered to the west by the 1st arrondissement; to the north by the 3rd, to the east by the 11th and 12th, and to the south by the Seine and the...
, it has been the location of the municipality of Paris since 1357. It serves multiple functions, housing the local administration, the Mayor of Paris (since 1977), and also serves as a venue for large receptions. The Mayor of Paris is Bertrand Delanoë
Bertrand Delanoë
Bertrand Delanoë is a French politician, and has been the mayor of Paris since 2001. He is member of the Socialist Party . Delanoë was born in Tunis, Tunisia to a French-Tunisian father and a French mother...
, since 2001. He was reelected in 2008 for a new six-year term.
It is located near the metro
Paris Métro
The Paris Métro or Métropolitain is the rapid transit metro system in Paris, France. It has become a symbol of the city, noted for its density within the city limits and its uniform architecture influenced by Art Nouveau. The network's sixteen lines are mostly underground and run to 214 km ...
station: Hôtel de Ville
Hôtel de Ville (Paris Metro)
Hôtel de Ville is a rapid transit station on Lines 1 and 11 of the Paris Métro. The station lies within the fourth arrondissement of the central city.-Location:...
.
History
Étienne Marcel
Etienne Marcel was provost of the merchants of Paris under King John II, called John the Good .Etienne Marcel was born into the wealthy Parisian bourgeoisie, being the son of the clothier Simon Marcel and his wife Isabelle Barbou...
, provost of the merchants
Provost (civil)
A provost is the ceremonial head of many Scottish local authorities, and under the name prévôt was a governmental position of varying importance in Ancien Regime France.-History:...
(i.e. mayor) of Paris, bought the so-called maison aux piliers ("House of Pillars") in the name of the municipality on the gently sloping shingle beach which served as a river port for unloading wheat and wood and later merged into a square, the Place de Grève
Place de Grève
The public square in the 4th arrondissement of Paris that is now the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville was, before 1802, called the Place de Grève. The French word grève refers to a flat area covered with gravel or sand situated on the shores or banks of a body of water...
(French for "Square of the Strand"), a place where Parisians often gathered, particularly for public executions. Ever since 1357, the City of Paris's administration has been located on the same location where the Hôtel de Ville stands today. Before 1357, the city administration was located in the so-called parloir aux bourgeois ("Parlour of Burgesses") near the Châtelet
Grand Châtelet
The Grand Châtelet was a stronghold in Ancien Régime Paris, on the right bank of the Seine, on the site of what is now the Place du Châtelet; it contained a court and police headquarters and a number of prisons....
.
In 1533, King Francis I
Francis I of France
Francis I was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France and he has been called France's original Renaissance monarch...
decided to endow the city with a city hall which would be worthy of Paris, then the largest city of Europe and Christendom
Christendom
Christendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity...
. He appointed two architects: Italian Dominique de Cortone, nicknamed Boccador because of his red beard, and Frenchman Pierre Chambiges
Pierre Chambiges
Pierre Chambiges, , was a French master mason and architect to François I of France and his son Henri II....
. The House of Pillars was torn down and Boccador, steeped in the spirit of the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, drew up the plans of a building which was at the same time tall, spacious, full of light and refined. Building work was not finished until 1628 during the reign of Louis XIII.
During the next two centuries, no changes were made to the edifice which was the stage for several famous events during the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
(notably the murder of the last provost of the merchants Jacques de Flesselles
Jacques de Flesselles
Jacques de Flesselles was a French public servant and one of the first victims of the French Revolution.On 21 April 1789, after serving as Intendant of Lyon , he became the last provost of the merchants of Paris, a post roughly equivalent to mayor...
by an angry crowd on 14 July 1789 and the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II
Thermidorian Reaction
The Thermidorian Reaction was a revolt in the French Revolution against the excesses of the Reign of Terror. It was triggered by a vote of the Committee of Public Safety to execute Maximilien Robespierre, Antoine Louis Léon de Saint-Just de Richebourg and several other leading members of the Terror...
when Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. He largely dominated the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror, which ended with his...
was shot in the jaw and arrested in the Hôtel de Ville with his followers). Eventually, in 1835, on the initiative of Rambuteau, préfet
Préfet
A prefect in France is the State's representative in a department or region. Sub-prefects are responsible for the subdivisions of departments, arrondissements...
of the Seine
Seine (département)
Seine was a département of France encompassing Paris and its immediate suburbs. Its préfecture was Paris and its official number was 75. The Seine département was abolished in 1968 and its territory divided among four new départements....
département, two wings were added to the main building and were linked to the facade by a gallery, to provide more space for the expanded city government. The architects were Étienne-Hippolyte Godde
Étienne-Hippolyte Godde
Étienne-Hippolyte Godde was a French neoclassic architect.Born in Breteuil, Oise, educated at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and Architect of the City of Paris from 1813 to 1830, Godde designed some thirty religious buildings, six public buildings, and numerous other structures. ...
and Jean-Baptiste Lesueur.
During the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
, the building played a key role in several political events. On 30 October 1870, revolutionaries broke into the building and captured the Government of National Defence, while making repeated demands for the establishment of a communard government. The existing government was rescued by soldiers who broke into the Hôtel de Ville via an underground tunnel built in 1807, which still connects the Hôtel de Ville with a nearby barracks. On 18 January 1871, crowds gathered outside the building to protest against speculated surrender to the Prussians, and were dispersed by soldiers firing from the building, who inflicted several casualties. The Paris Commune
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
chose the Hôtel de Ville as its headquarters, and as anti-Commune troops approached the building, Commune extremists set fire to the Hôtel de Ville destroying almost all extant public records from the French Revolutionary period. The blaze swallowed the building from the inside, leaving only an empty stone shell.
Reconstruction
Théodore Ballu
Théodore Ballu was a French architect.He entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1835 and was the pupil of Louis-Hippolyte Lebas....
and Édouard Deperthes
Édouard Deperthes
Pierre Joseph Édouard Deperthes was an French architect.-Early life :Deperthes was born in Houdilcourt, a commune in the Ardennes in July 1833. He was the son of two farmers.-Education:...
because they had won the contest of where the best designer in the tournament got to design the City Hall. Ballu also built the Church of La Trinité in the 9th arrondissement
IXe arrondissement
The 9th arrondissement , located on the Right Bank, is one of the 20 arrondissements of Paris, France. It contains many places of cultural, historical, and architectural interest, including the Palais Garnier, home to the Paris Opera, Boulevard Haussmann and its large department stores of Galeries...
and the belfry of the town hall of the 1st arrondissement
Ier arrondissement
The 1st arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France.Situated principally on the right bank of the River Seine, it also includes the west end of the Île de la Cité...
, opposite the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
's east facade. He also restored the Saint-Jacques Tower
Saint-Jacques Tower
Saint-Jacques Tower, the Tour Saint-Jacques, is a monument located in the IVe arrondissement of Paris, France. This Flamboyant Gothic tower is all that remains of the former 16th century Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie which was leveled shortly after the French Revolution.-A starting...
, a Gothic church tower in a square 150 metres to the west of the Hôtel de Ville.
The architects rebuilt the interior of the Hôtel de Ville within the stone shell that had survived the fire. While they rebuilt Hôtel de Ville –from the outside– a copy of the 16th-century French Renaissance
French Renaissance
French Renaissance is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century...
building that stood before 1871, the new interior was based on an entirely new design, with ceremonial rooms lavishly decorated in the 1880s style.
The central ceremonial doors under the clock are flanked by allegorical figures of Art, by Laurent Marqueste
Laurent Marqueste
Laurent-Honoré Marqueste was a French sculptor in the neo-Baroque Beaux-Arts tradition. He was a pupil of François Jouffroy and of Alexandre Falguière and won the Prix de Rome in 1871. On his return he made his official debut at the Paris salon of 1874 . In 1893 he became a professor at the École...
, and Science, by Jules Blanchard
Jules Blanchard
Jules Blanchard was a French sculptor.Blanchard was born in Puiseaux, the son of the sculptor Denis Foyatier. He was a student of François Jouffroy...
. Some 230 other sculptors were commissioned to produce 338 individual figures of famous Parisians on each facade, along with lions and other sculptural features. The sculptors included prominent academicians like Ernest-Eugène Hiolle
Ernest-Eugène Hiolle
Ernest-Eugène Hiolle was a French sculptor who specialized in classical and allegorical figures in plaster and bronze, as well as many contemporary portrait busts....
and Henri Chapu
Henri Chapu
Henri-Michel-Antoine Chapu was a French sculptor in a modified Neoclassical tradition who was known for his use of allegory in his works.-Life and career:...
, but easily the most famous was Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
. Rodin produced the figure of the 18th-century mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie...
, finished in 1882.
The statue on the garden wall on the south side is of Étienne Marcel
Étienne Marcel
Etienne Marcel was provost of the merchants of Paris under King John II, called John the Good .Etienne Marcel was born into the wealthy Parisian bourgeoisie, being the son of the clothier Simon Marcel and his wife Isabelle Barbou...
, the most famous holder of the post of prévôt des marchands
Provost (civil)
A provost is the ceremonial head of many Scottish local authorities, and under the name prévôt was a governmental position of varying importance in Ancien Regime France.-History:...
(provost of the merchants) which predated the office of mayor. Marcel was lynched in 1358 by an angry mob after trying to assert the city's powers too energetically.
The decor featured murals by the leading painters of the day, including Raphaël Collin
Raphaël Collin
Raphaël Collin was born and raised in Paris, where he became a prominent academic painter and in later life a professor at the Académie des Beaux-Arts...
, Jean-Paul Laurens
Jean-Paul Laurens
Jean-Paul Laurens , was a French painter and sculptor, and one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style.Born in Fourquevaux, he was a pupil of Léon Cogniet and Alexandre Bida...
, Puvis de Chavannes, Henri Gervex
Henri Gervex
Henri Gervex was a French painter born in Paris, and studied painting under Alexandre Cabanel, Pierre-Nicolas Brisset and Eugène Fromentin....
, Aimé Morot and Alfred Roll. Most can still be seen as part of a guided tour of the building.
Political venue
Since the French Revolution, the building has been the scene of a number of historical events, notably the proclamation of the French Third RepublicFrench Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
in 1870 and the famous speech by Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
on 25 August 1944 during the Liberation of Paris
Liberation of Paris
The Liberation of Paris took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on August 25th. It could be regarded by some as the last battle in the Battle for Normandy, though that really ended with the crushing of the Wehrmacht forces between the...
when he greeted the crowd from a front window.
The Hôtel de Ville was for many years the fief of Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...
, France's president from 1995 until May 2007, and was the site of a scandal centering on both illegal jobs given to Chirac's party members and an extravagant entertainment budget.
The current mayor, Bertrand Delanoë
Bertrand Delanoë
Bertrand Delanoë is a French politician, and has been the mayor of Paris since 2001. He is member of the Socialist Party . Delanoë was born in Tunis, Tunisia to a French-Tunisian father and a French mother...
, a socialist and the city's first openly gay leader, shares some of Marcel's ambition and almost shared his fate. He was stabbed in the building in 2002 during the first all-night, city-wide Sleepless Night (Nuit Blanche) festival when the doors of the long-inaccessible building were thrown open to the public. But Delanoë recovered and has not lost his zeal for access, later converting the mayor's sumptuous private apartments into a crèche (day nursery) for the children of municipal workers.
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Nearby places
The northern (left) side of the building is located on the Rue de Rivoli. The nearby Bazar de l'Hôtel de VilleBazar de l'Hôtel de Ville
The Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville or BHV is a department store on rue de Rivoli in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, facing the Hôtel de Ville. It is part of the Groupe Galeries Lafayette and served by the Metro station Hôtel de Ville. It has also opened several other shops in France and in Beirut,...
(BHV) is a department store
Department store
A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...
named after the Hôtel de Ville. The closest church of Hôtel de Ville is the St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church
St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church
The St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church of Paris sheltered one of the most famous dynasties of French musicians, the Couperin family, for more than two centuries, beginning in 1653....
.